Spreading The News At The Epic

2013-03-18

The Absa Cape Epic remains unique among cycling events because it attracts world-class elite athletes from a variety of disciplines, as well as amateur cyclists fit enough to spend eight days on their bikes exploring the scenic and rugged terrain of the Western Cape. 1 200 riders come from all around the world to participate, and this could never have happened without journalists and photographers to spread the word and show potential riders the scenery and action.

In 2013 more than 60 photographers and journalists are following the race, and their readers and viewers are interested in a whole range of subjects ranging from the professional cyclists to the celebrities, amateur riders and the scenery flashing by in the background. Exactly what is required for this event to become the most televised mountain bike race in the world becomes clear when you talk to Philip Bremner, Project and Operations Manager from Telkom Business, the official communications sponsor of the Absa Cape Epic.

A media centre is set up in each of the race villages to provide the bandwidth required by local and international print and broadcast journalists, photographers and television crews who need to upload their data to report on the event as it happens. “At each site 30Megs of Internet bandwidth is provided for connectivity to international sites and 50Megs is provided for local Internet connectivity,” explains Bremner.

The crew and race organisers also require these services already mentioned, and 8ta has provided mobile services to the Cape Epic with data modems and voice SIM cards to facilitate communication. In the race villages Telkom Business has also set up Internet cafés with laptops and WiFi throughout the Race Village to help the cyclists keep in touch with their friends, family and supporters.

Telkom's core equipment is housed in the media centre at each village and from there connectivity is distributed to the race village by optic fibre cabling. Each site has required approximately seven remote access switches and 30 Wi-Fi access points to ensure total coverage of the venue. As these areas are in open fields, the fibres were either buried in the ground, or strung via trees and lampposts to reach remote switches. Approximately 20 kilometers of fibre optic cabling was used and 2 kilometers of trenches have had to be dug to bury the fibre optic cables in high-risk areas where it needed to be protected from vehicle and pedestrian damage. Approximately 7 km of LAN cable was deployed across each of the sites.

Five of the sites are linked back to the main Telkom hub by fibre optic cable, while the Meerendal Prologue site was linked by Microwave. The Meerendal site posed particular communication challenges, and Telkom Business had to supply 1,5 km of additional Overhead copper cable to ensure that Super Sport had the connectivity they needed. ISDN Basic Rate, landline and ADSL were provided.

The media centre in each race village is operational from 07:00 until 21:00 daily and members of the Telkom Business team are available throughout the day to offer their assistance.  total of 17 Telkom Business personnel support the Absa Cape Epic; seven as the maintenance team on the active site and the rest as the advance team who leapfrog ahead to build the following site to ensure continuity. Each site is setup with duplicate hardware and technicians are on standby to monitor customer usage and spot possible component failures. Additional personnel are available off-site to jump in and help in the event of failure of the core system. In the case of the microwave system at Meerendal, there was literally a technician manning the high site in the mountains for the duration of the day’s activities.

Apart from the technical support offered during the event, Telkom Business is also the sponsor of the leaders Masters Category jersey in the category for riders aged 40 to 49, known as the Telkom Business Masters category.